Prescribed burning in southern Europe: developing fire management in a dynamic landscape

Abstract

Mediterranean landscapes are in a state of flux due to the impacts of changing land‐use patterns and climate. Fuel–weather interactions determine that large, severe wildfires are increasingly common. Prescribed burning in southern Europe is therefore justified by the need to manage fire‐prone vegetation types and maintain cultural landscapes that provide a range of ecosystem services. Prescribed fire has neutral or positive effects on soils and biodiversity, in contrast to wildfires, which can be extremely damaging. However, the limited extent of current applications are unlikely to reduce wildfire hazard or carbon emissions. Adoption of prescribed burning in the Mediterranean region has been slow, uneven, and inconsistent, and its development is constrained by cultural and socioeconomic factors as well as by specific factors related to demography, land use, and landscape structure. Sustainable fire management requires expansion of managers' ability to use prescribed burning, a varied response to unplanned fires, and modified regulation of burning associated with traditional agricultural land uses.

Fire effects in Pinus uncinata Ram plantations

“…There is still a lot of knowledge to be gain about fire ecology of PU. This understanding is critical to properly manage these forests and also to assess implications of climate change and changes in fire regime (Fernandes et al, 2013). Wildland fires with an intense fire behavior did not occur frequently in the past.…”

Causal relationships versus emergent patterns in the global controls of fire frequency

“…Intensive agriculture leads to landscape fragmentation (Guyette et al, 2002;Syphard et al, 2009), which inhibits fire spread by disrupting fuel continuity. Grazing also removes fuel, but fire has been used as part of the management of both croplands and grazing lands (Pyne, 2012;Fernandes et al, 2013). Fractional cover data for crops and grazing land (static) were obtained from Vegetation Continuous Fields data set MOD44B (DiMiceli et al, 2011).…”

Estimación de variables de combustible de copa y de masa, caracterizando el efecto de las claras en su estructura usando LiDAR aerotransportado

“…Particularly in the Atlantic area of NW Spain, wildland fires have been described as the most destructive type of forest disturbance (Gómez-Vázquez et al, 2013). The initiation and wildfire behavior, as well as it severity in maritime pine in this area, result from the combination of factors such as climate (Fernandes and Rigolot, 2007), human activities (Fernandes et al, 2013), the afforestation of communal lands in the 20 th century in a context of increasing depopulation and poor management (Rego, 1992), and the fact that fuels in this area can build-up to levels which are probably unequalled by pine stands in temperate climates elsewhere (Vega, 2001). Together with this, maritime pine is known for its flammability and susceptibility to crown fires (Fernandes and Rigolot, 2007).…”